ABOUT SHEETAL: LinkedIn  | CRIKEY GAMES




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KEY HIGHLIGHTS

👾 What inspired Sheetal to transition from ad tech to game development?

👩🏻‍💻 Why Sheetal picked hypercasual games to get started with

🎮 The key challenges and learnings with Crikey Games’ first game.

📝 The research process used by the Crikey Games team for coming up with game ideas.

💡Great ideas can come from anywhere – and from anyone on the team.

📱Even the app icons can make a huge difference to a game’s performance.

💯 How the Crikey Games team learned to improve upon their processes and games as they built new games.

🙌🏽 Who Sheetal’s first hire was – and why.

🥇 The roots of Crikey Games’ first hit game – and how the idea developed into the actual game.

🔙 What Sheetal would do differently if she had to start all over again.

KEY QUOTES

How Sheetal adapted to the gaming atmosphere

And that’s what I wanted. I wanted to know the other side, how does game development work? Like we can have an idea, but how does it actually come into action? And what are the level designs? What does the game design document look like? All these things,  I’ve learned over the past couple of years.

Structuring Fridays to focus on ideation

We list the top 10 games that the team likes and every Friday evening is the session where everybody comes up with a game. And they have to tell us why they like the game, and how we can use that kind of thing in our games. Those ideation sessions from the team from myself definitely helps because one – it gives you exposure to the outside world, other studios and what is the trend right now.

Playing games in order to develop games

Once they say this is the game that I’m talking about everybody downloads and plays the game on the fly. So while the person is talking, everybody is actually playing the game – so we’re all on the same page, talking about that particular game of why it interests them. What did they like about the game? Sometimes it’s about the color scheme. Somebody says it’s very light, somebody says, it’s very bright to the eyes, they also need to make further decisions saying, “Okay, how can we implement that into any of our games using the same mechanics or taking that as our inspiration?

Why there’s emphasis on an all hands meeting

Because you never know where the concept comes from. And I think that is very important. The concept need not come from a game designer, or from myself or the stakeholders, it can come from anywhere. And I think that’s where the gaming studios need to work closely. The game developer need not just work on the coding, he can be a part of the ideation sessions. And I think that’s been my process from the beginning and it helped.

The evolution of the game development process

So how do you build content? How do you progress? People get really bored with hypercasual games if it’s repetitive. You need to give out a few things, every few levels. So I guess that was the learning process for us. The first prototype that we did, we didn’t have all those. As we progressed we found out okay, you can get the CPI right, you can get the retention right but the CPI is actually, you know, related to the creatives that you run. So the first thing that you have to get is the creatives, the higher the CTR, the lower the CPI. So those were the things that were part of our learning process.

The inspiration behind the game Phone Case DIY

So while we were working with our prototypes, one of the prototypes that we were ideating was a phone case. The idea simply came from one of the YouTube videos that we were briefly looking at. And I’m like this is a huge trend right now, in the market where teenagers usually want to dress up with their phone case, and especially the Asian audiences that we were targeting. There’s a video of the game on YouTube. And I put it on my slack channel, saying, “Guys, what do you think about this idea?” and everybody got super excited. And then we started researching about it. And there were a lot of videos around this but there was no game. 

And then we went back to the drawing board on one of our ideation sessions, I think we spent almost a week on just ideation. 

How the audience responded to the game

The game became hugely profitable on iOS in month one or two, and then we launched Android earlier this year. And we hit like a 10 million download mark in eight days. A huge achievement for us. And we were like the number one game in 52 countries. It was amazing. And the best part was we were such a small studio.

FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW

Shamanth  

I am very excited to welcome Sheetal Bairamadgi to the Mobile User Acquisition Show. Sheetal, welcome to the show. 

Sheetal  

Hi Shamanth, how are you? 

Shamanth 

I’m good, thank you for being on the show. We’re very excited to have you, especially because you have navigated a transition that almost nobody I know has done. This is a transition from ad tech and marketing to being a game developer. Considering the overlap between these two worlds, you would think it would be more common, but it isn’t – perhaps because even though we swim about in the same pools, the kinds of skills you need to be a game developer are very, very different from those you need to succeed in ad tech. And you’ve not just navigated these changes, but also succeeded at them. You’ve done very, very well for yourself as a game developer. I’m excited to jump into and explore and tell the story of your journey in this episode.

Sheetal  

Sure thing!

Shamanth  

 I would definitely love to start at the beginning. So you worked for a number of years in ad tech, what inspired your transition to game development?

Sheetal  

I have got over a decade of experience in the ad tech space. Back in the days where ringtones were pretty popular, my experience started there. And as the industry progressed, I moved on from promoting ringtones, to promoting apps and understanding how the whole ad tech industry works, ad serving works, monetization works, app installs, and so on. And I think that’s something that I did for a very, very long time. So I understood the whole ecosystem of serving ads, how the ad network works, and so on. After doing that for over a decade, I wanted to do something different, and obviously, making sure that it complements the experience and the skills that I’ve learned in the past 10 years. So it’s just a curiosity to understand. And once you work with a lot of game developers, you’d be like, oh, what would things look like sitting in their seats? What does a user acquisition manager go through? What numbers do they look like? And how does Facebook stats look compared to the ad network stats? So I think that it was just a matter of curiosity, and speaking to a lot of people just wanted to see the other side of the spectrum, I guess.

Shamanth  

Yeah. And that certainly is a big shift. Among other things on ad tech, you were mainly on the business side, not so much on the technical side. So I imagine the technical aspects of game development would have been one of the things that’s been a big change. So what were some of the things you did to educate yourself about the technical or the engineering aspects of being a game developer?

Sheetal  

Yeah,it was completely new to me. And this was not something that I was going to sit and code in, or do the programming, or understand the game engines, like Unity. I wanted to get somebody who can complement my skills on the development side, who is pretty much me, but on the game development side, and that was my first hire. He was a technical production manager, who understands coding the game mechanics, how to develop games, and so on. So it’s not that I didn’t learn that, but I think it was more of an education for me. And that’s what I wanted. I wanted to know the other side, how does game development work? Like we can have an idea, but how does it actually come into action? And what are the level designs? What does the game design document look like? All these things,  I’ve learned over the past couple of years. But it’s not something that I do on a daily basis. I’ve got a team who does that. And again, it kind of worked perfectly into what I have experienced in my 10 years. I’ve seen the other side, which is marketing, I’m like, okay, is this what the audience needs? Where is the audience? That was my thought process and kind of went very well with the technical skills that the team had, saying, “Okay, this is how we do it.” And I was always looking from the marketing perspective, is this game marketable? Is this a trend right now? Or is this something that will work on Instagram, or Tiktok, or whatever we would prefer to run? And I think that was definitely a huge learning curve for me. And it was exciting. And it was something that I wanted to do when I started my gaming studio. 

Shamanth  

Yeah. So it sounds like you leaned on what you were already good at, which is marketing and understanding what was happening in the market. You hired somebody that was good at the execution side, the technical execution, and you were able to spec things out for them to get started. Tell us more about your first game. What inspired the idea for the first game – I ask just because I’m sure there was just a universe of possibilities to pick from. And how did this game perform in the market?

Sheetal  

When I started my gaming studio, hypercasual games were a huge trend. And the reason for the studio was also doing something really quick to develop, with not too much production time. And that’s where the hypercasual games came into my picture – I was saying, these are the games that I wanted to develop, because one – they’re very quick to develop and two – yes, I understand that life cycle is going to be very short. But given that I was bootstrapped, and that was the trend, it was a no brainer for me to pick up hypercasual games. And the first game that we had was a very simple runner kind of game. That was a huge trend back then. 

Learnings – when we started developing the game, it all looked good, it looked very polished. It was a typical hypercasual game. But I guess when we came to the marketing side, it was not as simple as it looked. The CPIs were high and then we were turning down the monetization. And if we do have too many ads, people were dropping off. So it was the first time that I was actually seeing the whole picture, because I only saw one side of the business before. Those were our challenges of how to balance the CPI and the monetization and the ROI of the game. And once you get that right, how do you scale? I guess we learned as the game progresses, as the testing goes on, there were a lot of things that we didn’t learn upfront, I guess. And once the game was live, we were like tuning the game, making the levels easier upfront, so that the user can get used to it because the game was pretty tough and those were the reviews. So we were tuning the game as we were running the marketing. So definitely the first games were not as simple as it looked.

Shamanth  

Yeah, I think it can be easy to look at the hypercasual games out there and say, “Oh, this is easy. I can do this.” And then you’re like, “wait, I need to balance the ads economy, the difficulties of the levels.” And out of curiosity, it sounds like you were doing this on the fly. Were there any resources, you were looking at saying, “Oh, this is exactly how I can design the levels.” I’m just curious if there was anything that was helpful in speeding up your learning curve at this point?

Sheetal  

Well, at that point, we were just going from the feedback that we’re getting from the users in terms of reviews, that they posted on the ads that we were running. We had some focus groups, they were pretty much saying that the game is pretty tough to play. So then immediately we were adjusting the speed, adjusting the levels of the game, and it was all on the fly. 

Shamanth  

I know you alluded to how hypercasual was a trend at that time – and how that inspired you to make your first game hypercasual. I’m curious if you can share what that decision making process was for that first game, or even your subsequent games. What was the research process, and how did the research itself translate into the actual games?

Sheetal  

The research was to take all the trends that were going on, like Tiktok, Youtube, Instagram, IG reels. These are the major channels that you constantly look at, to see what the trends are, what are people playing these days. And the other thing that you can definitely check is the top charts in both the App Store and the Google Play Store. And you can see that for some of the games, come up in the charts and then disappear. There are a few games that are sticking there for a longer time. And you know that it is due to the game mechanics that they use, and people love the mechanics, or there is something right that they have got. Those are the two research items we look at. Then we list off the top 10 games that the team likes and every Friday evening is the session where everybody comes up with a game. And they have to tell us why they like the game, and how we can use that kind of thing in our games. Those ideation sessions from the team from myself definitely helps because one – it gives you exposure to the outside world, other studios and what is the trend right now. And two is how to make use of those strengths into our game. Those are two go to points for us. The social media videos and the top charts.

Shamanth  

Interesting. I’m very curious about Friday ideation sessions. Also, because if I understand correctly, your team is fully remote and asynchronous. So tell me more about the structure or the format of these Friday ideation sessions. Do they screen share and play? Do they make a PowerPoint? Do they make a spreadsheet? Help me understand the mechanics of how that works.

Sheetal  

As you mentioned, everything is remote. I started in September 2019, I had an office but I had to shut down due to COVID. And since then, I’ve been working from home. So it’s 100% remote. The ideation sessions started just three, four months into lockdown because you can have dinner while you’re playing or you can have drinks as well, because it’s also the end of the week. We want to shut down and see what we have done for the week. It all starts actually on Monday where everybody has the task to play some games in the Play Store, which are there in the top charts or something that is emerging. You can see some of the games are in the hundreds in the top charts, but you can see that you’d like the game. You can play any game, but we usually stick to simulation, hypercasual, role-playing games, because those are the categories that we focus on. You then come back to us saying, which game are you talking about? What’s the game play, and why do you like the game? 

Because it’s all remote, once they say this is the game that I’m talking about everybody downloads and plays the game on the fly. So while the person is talking, everybody is actually playing the game – so we’re all on the same page, talking about that particular game of why it interests them. What did they like about the game? Sometimes it’s about the color scheme. Somebody says it’s very light, somebody says, it’s very bright to the eyes, they also need to make further decisions saying, “Okay, how can we implement that into any of our games using the same mechanics or taking that as our inspiration? How can you come up with a new game? If they’ve done this, we can do this.” 

And that worked very well. I tried it for a month. And it worked very well, one, because I think the team got together and two, there were a lot of ideas, like some of the things a developer can have. He can talk about something that he has seen, which is not even an app yet. But something is seen on YouTube, or Squid Game, or the Netflix show that was running. And I think that was pretty interesting for us and the whole process worked out pretty well. Sometimes you look at a few things, and then you’re inspired by some of the apps and then you’re like, Okay, this is what we can work around, let’s do a prototype. And we all agree on that.

Shamanth  

Interesting. Is there an example of an idea that came out of this ideation process that actually became a game or a feature that you used in a game?

Sheetal  

There was something very interesting about one of the games that we really liked. It was the sand cutting game from Crazy Labs. And we really liked the game, just because of the ASMR feeling that it had, it was very relaxing. But we wanted to give another angle to the same kind of cutting. I think what we did was a bit different to the present game. We were cutting but we were actually telling the shapes that the user has to make from the game. And that definitely came in through our ideation sessions, because we found that the game was pretty relaxing, and it definitely helped in our prototyping.

Shamanth  

Cool. And I do know a number of ads at least have been inspired by that if not games themselves. So it’s a mechanic that has wide appeal. It’s great that this is something your team caught on. In fact, what you said just reminded me of something that came up in another interview. I believe this was Michail Katkoff of Deconstructor of Fun, we had on this podcast. The interview is about what makes for great gaming studios. And he was like, we were looking at one of these Call of Duty mobile studios, and they spend their entire Fridays playing games. For many outsiders, this would look like such a waste of time. But when you look at it, we are in the business of making games, we should be playing games. 

He also added : “it’s hard to isolate what makes a successful studio. But I can tell you, all the studios that I have seen that haven’t played their own game have haven’t played their competitor’s games, it’s just very, very hard to succeed, just because they’re not plugged into the market.” And I think that tees up with what you just said. And I think it’s very instructive that you’ve made it a very intentional part of your ideation and design process.

Sheetal  

Because you never know where the concept comes from. And I think that is very important. The concept need not come from a game designer, or from myself or the stakeholders, it can come from anywhere. And I think that’s where the gaming studios need to work closely. The game developer need not just work on the coding, he can be a part of the ideation sessions. And I think that’s been my process from the beginning and it helped. I think Friday evening has become a trend right now with us. And we definitely spend more time there. Also, we have a Slack channel dedicated to apps that we would like the team to play. And then we can discuss it on Fridays as well.

Shamanth  

Right and out of curiosity, the folks who take part in ideation sessions, they are across the team? Is it just a subset of a team, like somebody who’s doing actual development and yourself? Or is it everybody, including the folks who do QA?

Sheetal  

It’s the whole team, it’s the game designer, myself, the production manager, including the artists as well. The artists are also involved because sometimes we’re talking about the app icon. For example, the app icon is a very fascinating thing that people don’t pay much attention to, especially on Google Play. When we did a lot of A/B testing, we found that it actually makes a huge difference. So what do we like about the app icons? Why are they so bright and there’s a lot of discussion on the art side as well what colors to use, what color scheme, the animation, what did you like about these animations? Can we do this in our next game?

Shamanth  

If I understand correctly, you guys put out the first couple of games before you came up with an eventual hit. What were some of the games that were not huge? And what, if any, learnings from the games that didn’t work out that helped shape the eventual game that was a hit?

Sheetal  

Obviously, there’s a lot of learning from each of the prototypes we tested. One is the CPI was good, but the retention was low. No point in progressing with those kinds of games. And so then we learned, we need to focus on retention as well, because yes, the CPI can be low but if you don’t have retention, you have a failure. So the next prototype that we were focused on, we were building retention. Retention is usually based on content, and meta in the game. And I guess that’s where we learned from each of the prototypes that we failed on. And saying, the next game, it needs to have a great concept, some content, at least 15 to 20 minutes of gameplay to actually go into testing. 

So how do you build content? How do you progress? People get really bored with hypercasual games if it’s repetitive. You need to give out a few things, every few levels. So I guess that was the learning process for us. The first prototype that we did, we didn’t have all those. As we progressed we found out okay, you can get the CPI right, you can get the retention right but the CPI is actually, you know, related to the creatives that you run. So the first thing that you have to get is the creatives, the higher the CTR, the lower the CPI. So those were the things that were part of our learning process. So now when we think about the concept, we are now thinking about what creatives we should run in marketing. This process wasn’t there two years ago, when we started.

Shamanth  

I find that so impressive, just because you didn’t have a formal game design background. And that’s actually helpful because the vast majority of developers who have game design backgrounds or who have experienced gaming, they start with the game and the game mechanics and it sounds like you are thinking as much about the creatives and distribution, as you are about the game mechanics, which eventually is so critical to scale and in the distribution of the game and financial viability for what it’s worth. Just to switch gears a bit, I know you briefly alluded to your team and the first folks you hired, tell us about your first hire, or the first couple of hires.

Sheetal  

The first hire was the technical production manager, who was technically very sound and has over around a decade of experience in programming, coding, managing developers and artists. And he was himself a coder as well, very hands-on. That’s exactly what I was looking for – the skills that I don’t have, and I’m a very hands-on person on the marketing side. But I was looking more on the technical side and the programming side, which I didn’t have. So that was my first hire.

Shamanth  

Were there any challenges in particular that came up? While hiring and growing a team that you think could be helpful to share?

Sheetal  

I had a very small team, and I didn’t want to grow too fast. Just to get you know, everything right, this was completely new to us as well. So I took baby steps, and didn’t hire a group of developers. I had 2 developers, 2 artists when I started and then the production manager was managing them. But the challenging part was definitely that, because my understanding of that side wasn’t that high, we took longer than I thought to launch, because it was a learning curve for me as well. And once we got up to speed, now we are in a better shape. I can understand what timelines we’re looking at. What is the game design document? We are in a stage where if anybody says – what about this app icon or this app icon? I say let the data decide. And I think that information wasn’t there. And obviously, the COVID situation.  I couldn’t travel, couldn’t hire, so it was all remote, I didn’t have that personal connection with anybody. And I guess I need to talk to them face to face. And that was a huge bummer for us. 

Shamanth  

Tell us more about the hit game, and what some of the winning games you come up with have been.

Sheetal  

So while we were working with our prototypes, one of the prototypes that we were ideating was a phone case. The idea simply came from one of the YouTube videos that we were briefly looking at. And I’m like this is a huge trend right now, in the market where teenagers usually want to dress up with their phone case, and especially the Asian audiences that we were targeting. There’s a video of the game on YouTube. And I put it on my slack channel, saying, “Guys, what do you think about this idea?” and everybody got super excited. And then we started researching about it. And there were a lot of videos around this but there was no game. 

And then we went back to the drawing board on one of our ideation sessions, I think we spent almost a week on just ideation. 

Again, the steps were different. The first idea that  we were talking about is, we’ll tell the user what the design of the phone case would be. And they have to just design that. And that was the first idea that we had. Give the user exactly blue, red, purple, other colors that you have to use. This is what you have to design. And I was like there’s so many games right there, I think there was an ice cream maker. What happens if we give all the elements, all the ingredients to the user, and the user decides how to make it. So completely make it, DIY, and I think that was the idea. It was not the phone case, I think making it a DIY game, giving the user all the tools and things to show them and let them be creative about the design they could do. And I think that was the hit idea there. 

And then as soon as we came to that stage, we were like, “Okay, what about the content?” There were so many videos, and we kept coming up with content. So we can do glitters, phone rings and so many things to add on. And then it became like a full on game. And there was so much content that we can keep adding. And based on what I just said before, these were the things that we’ve learnt – a good concept, not in the store before, have a lot of content behind the scenes, and something unique about it. And I think that was the DIY element. All these ingredients were there. And when we made a complete GDD of the document, which was not just a simple one liner, it was a complete 12-15 page document. It had all the research that we had done. What audience we’re going to be targeting, which platforms are we targeting, what other games are out there, which are massively hit games. 

There were two publishers, one was Lion studios, and one was Crazy Labs, both of them amazing at what they do with their tech stack and the way they spend on UA. And they’ve both got hit games. I’ve got lots of friends in both publishing companies. We went in with Crazy Labs, because I think a lot of elements that we saw in the game design document related to their hit game Tie Dye, which was a massive hit when we were ideating on our game. I thought it would be perfect to approach them. We went in with them, pitched the idea and they were spot on. The good thing about Crazy Labs was, they have seen so many games, they’ve seen ideas and concepts in and out all day. I think as soon as they saw the concept, they knew there was something and were chasing us to get the prototype up and running. We did a five level build, did a CPI test, and the CPI was amazing, great videos for it. And you know, we got everything right for it based on the learnings, failures from our previous prototypes. And as soon as the CPI was low, I guess there was no stopping for the game after that, because we know we have a hit game, content is there, we just have to roll out a proper game from there on. 

I have to say Crazy Labs has done an extraordinary job on the user acquisition for the game. I mean, it took off, it was December of 2020 peak season for Christmas, the inventory is pretty expensive at that point of time. But I think they did an extraordinary job on user acquisition, right creatives, got the balance right, the monetization, and the game became hugely profitable on iOS in month one or two, and then we launched Android earlier this year. And we hit like a 10 million download mark in eight days. A huge achievement for us. And we were like the number one game in 52 countries. It was amazing. And the best part was we were such a small studio. To see that in that store, we were just a normal studio, we thought okay, yes, we’re publishing again, but not all published games took off like that, right. And I think it took us by a storm, we were just playing the game, then we were watching the charts, it was such an exciting journey. And to see a small, four to five people studio achieving something big and getting all the help from Crazy Labs was a dream come true. And I give all credit to Crazy Labs for the support that we got, given they understand that we were quite a small studio. And also I think there were a few days where they were chasing us saying: “is the bill ready?” I have to mention this, I have never seen any game publisher or anybody in my lifetime, where the publisher actually chases the studio for an invoice.

Shamanth  

That is crazy. That’s very impressive. And just to underscore some of the things that stood out to me in what you said are one, the genesis of the game itself was in the idea that came off of videos that you guys were seeing, and you’re like, there are videos, but there’s no game, this is an opportunity. But the idea alone wasn’t enough, you guys had the foundation of the brainstorming sessions, the ideation sessions that you had built up during all of the games that hadn’t quite worked out. So really, it was the idea and the ideation and the development of the idea that was responsible for really taking that idea into a game that was really, really that scalable, solid & sustainable. Yeah, that’s very impressive. I think it’s easy to take a look at a hypercasual game and say – “Oh, you just flip a switch, you get lucky.” But I think the process of actually building this with the learnings from everything that hadn’t worked out was so critical to having this be the hit that it was. Right. And I definitely want to underscore all of that work and all of that effort that went into that. And what happened after that? Have there been other games? What have you been working on since then and right now?

Sheetal  

Well, obviously, that game did 100 million downloads recently which was a huge achievement for us. And also gave me a base and now we’re planning on expanding the team. And I think that was very important so we can run multiple projects. The hypercasual space has evolved a lot in the last couple of years. So we’re looking for more retention-based games. Yes, we might not be rolling out a game every month. But we want to make sure that we get everything right, and scale the game correctly. And we’re also looking at self publishing the games right now, because of my journey where I’ve developed the game and actually promoted the game, keeping it all in house. And I think that is what we’re working on right now.

Shamanth  

Great. Yeah, I think that’s a big next step. But considering the steps you’ve taken before, I’m sure you’ll crack this. Just looking back on your journey, starting with your first ideas, figuring out what’s working, and actually coming up with a hit game and growing it and scaling it. If you had to start all over again, what might be some of the things you would do differently? That could be with your processes, your hiring, or anything else?

Sheetal  

I think I would have hired a game designer upfront within the first hires. That was definitely missing in the game. I had it in the structure, but I don’t think we hired a game designer upfront.

Shamanth  

I know you had to figure out a lot of these things with your own research so I imagine that kind of cut short some of that learning process. Sheetal, this has been incredibly inspiring and instructive, at the same time, this is perhaps a good place for us to wrap this conversation. Before we do that, could you tell folks how they can find out more about you and everything you do?

Sheetal  

I’m mostly on LinkedIn so you can reach out to me on LinkedIn. And if you want to email me, I’m at sheetal@crikey.io.

Shamanth  

Wonderful. We will link to all of that in the show notes. But for now, this is perhaps a good place to wrap today’s conversation. Thank you for sharing your story with us today.

Sheetal  

Thank you Shamanth. It was a pleasure being here.

A REQUEST BEFORE YOU GO

I have a very important favor to ask, which as those of you who know me know I don’t do often. If you get any pleasure or inspiration from this episode, could you PLEASE leave a review on your favorite podcasting platform – be it iTunes, Overcast, Spotify, Google Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast fix. This podcast is very much a labor of love – and each episode takes many many hours to put together. When you write a review, it will not only be a great deal of encouragement to us, but it will also support getting the word out about the Mobile User Acquisition Show.

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Thank you – and I look forward to seeing you with the next episode!